Walter Lagraves: Unemployment rate drop a crock

January 6, 2012

The optimistic crowing about the just released 8.5 percent unemployment rate is a crock. The rate wildly understates the magnitude of our unemployment catastrophe.

Lauding the 8.5 percent unemployment rate is very much like watching the Titanic slide beneath the sea minutes after it started sinking, and hundreds had already drowned. And then optimistically noting that the percentage of folks drowning is declining. There simply are fewer people left to drown.

The unemployment rate measures only the number of people employed / the number of people actually in the labor force. There were 109,000 fewer persons in the labor force last month than in the previous month. There are fewer folks left to drown. Last month, there were 176,000 persons added to the “employed” ranks. But, last month the ranks of those who have abandoned the labor force grew by 194,000. More people gave up than were hired.

Today there are 1.3 million fewer Americans with jobs than when Mr. Obama took office. That is calamitous.